Historical ranch home tour set for May

EL CAJON  As part of the city of El Cajon’s centennial year celebration, the El Cajon Historical Society is hosting a tour of the JPR Hall Ranch Home. The tour is slated for 1 to 4 p.m., Saturday May 4.

According to the Historical Society, the Hall family arrived in San Diego in 1886, moving soon thereafter to El Cajon, where Jesse Phillip Rexford Hall and his wife, Charlotte, purchased 60 acres to grow wheat, fruit trees and a vineyard in the east end of the valley.

Later, their eldest son, Wilson Dana Hall, added 40 acres to the south for wheat. Jesse Phillip Rexford Hall and Wilson Dana Hall built the redwood home in 1896, after W.D. Hall had been working on the Hotel del Coronado building.

The family kept the home until the 1930s; it then had various owners until 1959 when Albert and June Van Zanten purchased it.

“They just fell in love with the home,” said Albert and June Van Zanten’s daughter, Jonna Waite, the current vice president of the El Cajon Historical Society, and the current owner of the home, along with her husband, Ken.

“The tour had been done in the past when my mother was alive, but this is probably the last time that I will want to do that,” Waite said. “This probably be the last time it will be open to the public. If we ever sold the house, who could say the new owner would be concerned with something like that?”

The cost for the tour is $15 in advance, $20 on the day of the event at the home, at 1591 E. Madison Ave.

Proceeds benefit the El Cajon Historical Society, to help defray costs of its Knox House museum, maintenance and events such as its annual third-grade essay contest..

For more information on the Hall family, including the El Cajon elementary school that bears the name W.D. Hall, at elcajonhistory.org/echs_hallfamily.html.

For more information on the event, visit elcajonhistory.org or call (619) 504-6301.